“Where *are* they?”
Willow was getting impatient. It had been dark for a half an hour, and Buffy and Angel still hadn’t arrived. She was waiting near the door in her wheelchair. It had taken her nearly an hour to persuade her mother that she felt well enough to go out, and she didn’t want to waste any of the hard-earned time she had. “Giles, you don’t think that anything could have happened....” As she spoke, they heard footsteps outside the doors.
Slowly, the doors swung open, and Buffy and Angel walked in. Buffy looked awfully tired, and she leaned heavily against Angel when they stopped just inside. But above the dark circles, her eyes shone happily, and she seemed more alive than she’d been in months. Angel looked nearly as exhausted as Buffy, and his face was a mask of guilt and sorrow.
“Oz, help me.” Willow was struggling to stand, but her legs just wouldn’t hold her up, and her head whirled. Oz was at her side in a second, and she leaned on him as she walked slowly towards Angel and Buffy. Buffy stepped away from Angel and Willow enveloped her in a huge hug. “We were all so worried.... I wasn’t sure if it had worked.”
“It worked perfectly, Will. You were great.”
Over Buffy’s shoulder, Willow looked at Angel and smiled. She was rewarded with a small smile in return, and as she watched, he mouthed the words, “I’m sorry about your fish.”
“It’s all right,” she mouthed back. She released Buffy and took a few shaky steps towards him, and Angel, to his surprise, found himself enfolded in a hug just as warm as the one Buffy had received. He returned it, and whispered softly in her ear, “Thank you.”
“No problem.” He released her, and Oz helped her back to her wheelchair. Buffy was narrowly escaping being squashed by Giles, who was hugging her so tightly she could barely breathe.
“My dear girl...” Suddenly Buffy realized how close she had come to losing him, and she pressed her face against the comforting roughness of tweed, clinging to him as tightly as he held on to her.
Giles watched Angel as he hugged Buffy. He hadn’t been sure how it would be, how he would react to seeing the..... *thing* that had killed Jenny. To his surprise, when he looked at Angel, he only saw vague traces of the monster that had killed the woman he loved, and tortured him. The arrogance was gone from the eyes, the self-confidence from the stance. It was a person that stood before him. A person eaten up with guilt.
He stretched out his right hand. Slowly, Angel reached out and grasped it. Their eyes met, and held. They said everything they needed to say in that silence, apologies and forgiveness alike.
Xander’s voice cut across the silence. “Well, the Prodigal Son has returned. Shall we kill the fatted calf, or, in a new twist invented by me, throw him back out in the alley?” Sarcasm dripped from his words.
Buffy’s eyes narrowed as she pulled away from Giles. Slowly, she walked across the library to where Xander sat at one of the tables, next to Cordelia. “Take that back, Xander. Now. I’m sick of your petty rivalry issues.”
Xander looked at her steadily, chin raised slightly in defiance. He remained silent.
“I mean it, Xander. You owe me.”
His eyes started twitching slightly. “What do you mean?” he asked, glancing at Willow nervously.
“You know what I mean, Xander. Wasn’t there something you forgot to *tell* me a couple days ago? Something having to do with a *curse*, maybe?”
Willow sat up straighter in her wheelchair. “Wait a minute. You didn’t tell her? Xander, how could you? I asked you to tell her, I told you.....” She trailed off, leaving Xander to squirm under her hurt gaze. Giles was staring at him in astonishment, even Cordy was looking at him like he was some sort of bug. Wait, that was how she normally looked at him. It seemed worse this time, somehow.
Buffy was in full Slayer mode now, angry and dangerous. “Who’s decision was that to make, Xander? Too tough a question for you? I’ll answer it.” She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him to his feet. Her face was less than an inch from his, and he could see the cold fury in her eyes. “It was *my* decision. *Mine*. Not yours.”
Xander finally got up enough courage to answer. “You wouldn’t have made it. You would have waited, and the whole world would have been sucked into hell because you couldn’t bear to kill your precious boyfriend!” He was yelling now, nearly as angry as Buffy. “He killed people, Buffy! He tortured your friends! So now he gives you the ‘I feel so guilty, can you ever forgive me’ act, and you just forgive and forget? Wake up!”
Shaking, Buffy struggled to contain her urge to punch him as hard as she could. “For your information, Xander, I *did* kill my ‘precious boyfriend’. I shoved a sword into his stomach and sent him to hell. I did it even though his soul had been restored, even though it almost killed me. The only reason he’s here now is because somehow he knew that I needed him. By some miracle, he got to me before I could -” She cut herself off suddenly, and let go of his shirt, pushing him back against the table. She took a few steps backwards, and practically fell into Angel, who’d come up behind her during the argument. He took her in his arms, and she buried her face against his chest. Her next words were slightly muffled.
“You do *not* have the right to make my decisions for me, Xander.”
Willow sat at the computer, trying to decipher the meaning of the curse she’d put on Angel. Somewhere in the twisted, confusing phrases was the clue to whether or not the happiness clause still stood. Angel sat beside her, relieved to have finished the third degree Giles had subjected him to. He had decided early on that it was the blood on Angel’s hands that had opened the portal out of hell, but he’d still demanded every detail. Angel had tried to accomadate him, although he’d left out the part about Buffy trying to kill herself. He just said that he’d gotten the feeling that she needed him. The Watcher had enough to deal with without knowing that his Slayer had almost committed suicide.
Buffy was sitting with Giles at his desk, trying to figure out a way for her to get unexpelled, and for her to make up her finals without having to take summer school. The police had dropped the charges on evidence from Xander, Willow, and Giles, so that wasn’t a problem anymore. Buffy’s mother, on the other hand, was.
“Buffy, you can’t just leave home. You’re only seventeen. Where will you go?”
< I’ll live with Angel > she thought to herself, but decided against saying it aloud. “I don't know, Giles. But she doesn’t want me at home. She told me never to come back.” She bit her lip and looked away. “She doesn’t even know that I’m still in town. I left a note that I was leaving town, and I got on a bus, but I couldn’t leave. So she thinks that I’m long gone.”
Giles sighed. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it, Buffy. She was just angry with you. She didn’t understand.” He pushed the phone on his desk towards her. “Why don’t you just call her? Talk to her. See what she thinks.”
“Not now, Giles. I need a break. I don’t want to have to deal with her right now. Her, or the police, or the school board. Can’t I just drop out of sight for a few days? I need to rest.”
“Where would you go?”
There was a long, heavy silence. “Angel’s?” Buffy said softly, not looking at him.
“I don’t think that’s the best idea, Buffy.”
It was Buffy’s turn to sigh. “If the whole happiness thing is still an issue, trust me, we won’t get anywhere near each other. I’ll be a responsible little Slayer and go home and face the music.” She took a deep breath and leaned across the desk. Her eyes were pleading. “But if it’s not, if Ms. Calendar found a way around it, or if Willow can, then why not? What’s the harm? I love him, Giles. I want to be with him.” Studying his face closely, she continued. “I read something in.... I don’t know, some book you handed me to research.... Slayers don’t live long, Giles. You know that. The book said that none have ever lived past twenty-five. If that’s all the time I have, why shouldn’t I have my little bit of happiness while I have the chance?”
Giles wasn’t looking at her. His thoughts rested on Jenny for a moment. < A little bit of happiness..... I missed my chance, didn’t I, Jenny? Because I was foolish and stubborn, we both missed our chance. >
Rubbing his hand across his eyes, he stood up. “Very well, Buffy. If there aren’t any problems with the curse, you can go wherever you want. But you have to promise me that you’ll at least call your mother and tell her that you’re all right. You don’t have to tell her where you are, just that you’ll be home soon.”
“What if she doesn’t want me?”
Giles turned toward her and smiled tiredly. “She will, Buffy. Trust me, she will.”
***
“Cordy?”
“What?”
“Are you mad at me too?”
“No.” Pause. “I don’t think it was the right thing for you to do, but I’m not mad at you. It turned out all right. I guess that’s all that matters now.”
“Cordy?”
“What?”
“Wanna go make out in the broom closet?”
“God, Xander, is that all you ever think about?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“All right. Later.”
***
Angel watched intently as Willow scrolled down the computer screen for the umpteenth time. The ancient Gypsy language appeared to have lost something in the translation. “Arrrgh! I just know I’m missing something here. I don’t suppose the Gypsies gave you a written copy of the original curse that you happen to have with you?”
He smiled slightly. “No, they were more interested in watching me suffer. Sorry.”
Willow sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She started at the top and started to read down again, slowly.
Angel watched her. “Willow?”
“Hmmm?”
“I was just wondering something.”
She switched her gaze from the computer screen to him. “What about?”
“Why were you never afraid of me? Before I - well, before all this, and you’re not even *nervous* now. Even when you first found out that I was a vampire you weren’t afraid. Why?”
Willow took a deep breath and let it out slowly, stretching the cramps from her shoulders as she sat up straighter. She studied Angel’s face for a moment, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it was just because..... because Buffy was so happy around you. It was like someone turned on a light inside her whenever she talked about you, or saw you. And she used to go off in long rambling monologues about your eyes....” She leaned back in her wheel chair. “I guess I just thought that anyone who had eyes like that *couldn’t* be bad. And you always looked so sad, and lonely. I felt a little bit sorry for you. It’s the same now. You look like you’re killing yourself with guilt, and I know that you would never do anything like that if you were in control. I trust you.”
Angel had been staring at the grain in the computer table during her whole speech. Now he looked up and gave her a small smile.
Blushing slightly, Willow turned back to the computer. “I think that’s the longest I’ve ever talked to you and still made sense,” she said, smiling.
An old memory crept to the surface in Angel’s mind. Something Buffy had told him that Oz had said about Willow, something about her smile..... “Oz is right. You do have the sweetest smile.”
Willow blushed even harder, and glanced over to the table where Oz sat, staring off into space. < Probably thinking about some new song for his guitar... > He seemed to sense her looking at him and he smiled at her. Smiling back, she returned to her work. She concentrated on the computer screen again. She was silent for a while, and Angel had begun to read the text over her shoulder, when she suddenly spoke again.
“She loves you so much, you know. Her eyes were so.... so *empty* after you.... um...” She hesitated, then plunged ahead. “...after you left. She wasn’t really alive. And she wouldn’t even *look* at any other guys.” Willow scrolled down the screen some more, and glanced covertly at Angel. He was staring at something across the library, in Giles’ office. < Oh. That’s where Buffy is. Wake up, Willow. > She focused on the computer screen once more, hoping against hope to find the answer to the question they were all asking: will it ever happen again?
Abruptly, she straightened in her chair and read the words in front of her again. She’d skimmed this part of the ritual hurriedly in preparation, but she’d been in a rush and hadn’t focused on the meaning. It was an optional part, something about added consequences...... “Angel, read this. Does it look like what we’re looking for?”
Angel immediately snapped out of his trance-like stare and looked down at the monitor and read the words that Willow highlighted for him. ‘Should the ritual be forced upon a subject as a punishment, you may wish to involve consequences. If a curse is needed to appropriately punish the subject, you should involve the necessary sub-ritual here. If the sub-ritual is not incorporated into the Ritual of Restoration, the soul will remain permanently in the subject.’ He slowly turned to Willow, who was staring at him, her eyes wide. He nodded, and a huge grin spread across her face.
“Giles!” she called excitedly. “Giles, get over here!”
The librarian was at her elbow in an instant. “What is it? What did you find?” His eyes sped across the highlighted words, and he, too, began to smile. “Did you involve any ‘sub-rituals’, Willow?”
“Of course not.”
“Then it looks like this is about as permanent as it can get.” He turned to face Angel. The vampire was staring at the screen as if he couldn’t believe the words printed there. Giles gently placed a hand on his shoulder, and Angel’s dazed gaze rose to meet his. “Buffy fell asleep a few minutes ago. Do you want to be the one to wake her and tell her the news?”
Angel nodded, unable to speak. Why was everybody being so unbelievably good to him? Willow, who he’d threatened, Giles, whose girlfriend he’d killed, Buffy, who’d almost died by his hand. He rose unsteadily from his chair and walked towards Giles’ office. He stood in the doorway watching her sleep for a moment. She looked so peaceful, he was reluctant to wake her.
The decision was made for him. Buffy stirred, and opened her eyes. Stretching, she turned her head and saw him. Her eyes became solemn. “Did you find anything?” she asked, her voice shaking ever so slightly.
He nodded, pulled a chair over and sat down. She turned to face him, and their eyes met. “Is it all right, then?”
A lump rose in his throat and he nodded again. Buffy reached out and touched his face, tracing his profile with her fingertips, brushing lightly against his lips. She stared at him as if mesmerized, and finally, after what seemed like forever, she put her arms around him and sank into his embrace.
Five pairs of eyes watched them as they held each other. Cordelia moved closer to Xander, and he put his arm around her. He felt a sort of..... release, and something finally became clear to him. Angel loved her. He really, truly loved her. If he loved her enough that they shared a bond even from hell, they must be meant for each other. He pulled Cordy closer and kissed the top of her head. She glanced up at him, surprised, and then kissed him lightly on the cheek.
Willow was smiling so hard she was afraid her face was going to split. < I did it > she thought happily. < They’re both so happy, and they’re going to *stay* happy this time..... > She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up. Oz had come up behind her silently, and he smiled down at her. She smiled back and covered his hand with her own.
Giles watched the two embrace, and thought once again of Jenny. He remembered her brown eyes, glancing at him flirtatiously from underneath lowered lashes. The way she teased him. How she felt in his arms. She’d always smelled of something wonderful..... what was it? It suddenly seemed very important that he remember. He racked his brain, but the scent eluded him. < She’s only been gone a couple of months..... why can’t I remember? I miss her so much.... > He closed his eyes against the pain, but it came from within, and couldn’t be blotted out.
Buffy pulled away from Angel slightly and looked up into his eyes. “Can we go home now?” she asked, sounding like a tired child.
He gently pushed her hair away from her face, and left his hand just touching her cheek. “You want me to take you to your house?” His eyes were warm and caring, wanting to please her.
She shook her head. “No. I want to stay with you. Just for a little while. Please?”
Angel pulled her back into his arms. “For as long as you want. If you’re sure.”
He felt her nod. “I’m sure.” She paused for a moment. “You’re my home. Wherever you are, that’s where I’ll feel safe.”
They stood together and walked out into the library, so absorbed in each other that they forgot about the five other people who watched them go. Near the double doors, Buffy stumbled, clinging to Angel’s arm. “I’m sorry. I’m just so tired....” He responded by scooping her up in his arms. She allowed her eyes to fall shut, resting her head against his shoulder.
Giles, Willow, Oz, and Cordelia stayed silent, unwilling to interrupt such a private moment, but Xander stood and spoke just as Angel got to the doors.
“Hey, Dead Boy!” he called in a challenging tone.
Angel turned, his arms tightening around Buffy. “Yeah?”
Xander hesitated for a minute. “Take..... take good care of her, ok?” he said with a slight smile.
After a moment, Angel smiled back. “I promise.” Then he turned and was gone.